On December 20, the Azerbaijan National Anti-Doping Agency (AMADA) held an event dedicated to the fight against drugs and steroids in sports on the topic "Healthy life without drugs, clean sports without steroids".
In addition to ANADA, representatives of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the State Commission for Combating Drug Addiction and Illegal Trafficking of Narcotics, the State Customs Committee and the Ministry of Health also participated in the event.
At the event, a video consisting of interviews with drug addicts prepared by ANADA was shown.
Shafaq Huseynli, director of ANADA, spoke at the event and emphasized the relevance of both drug and steroid problems, and gave information about the Agency"s work in this field.
He stated that after AMADA was added to the list of executive institutions of the "2019-2024 State Program on Illegal Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Their Precursors and Combating Drug Addiction" by the Decree of the President of Azerbaijan dated December 22, 2020 , the activity in this direction has been further expanded. This year alone, 174 educational seminars were held for sports federations, athletes and their support staff for the purpose of anti-narcotics promotion and education. In addition to the capital, the awareness-raising measures covered the regions as well. Thus, within the framework of cooperation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Science and Education, a series of educational seminars were held in Yardimli, Lerik, Jalilabad, Masalli, Lankaran, Astara, Ganja, Shamkir, Tovuz, Goygol, Yevlax and Goranboy regions. More than 1,300 athletes, coaches, doctors and sports teachers participated in these events.
Sh. Huseynli said that the use of drugs and steroids in sports is an actual problem in the world. Thus, 63 percent of all doping use registered during 2017-2022 is related to the use of steroids and drugs.
How urgent the problem is for Azerbaijan is also shown by the statistics of anti-doping rule violations detected by ANADA during its activity. Thus, 43 percent of anti-doping rule violations detected in the country are related to the use of steroids, and 13 percent are related to the use of drugs.
The director of ANADA emphasized that large-scale research projects were implemented by the Agency in order to analyze the situation in this field in detail. Another project was held on November 7-20 this year. The project "Survey on the analysis of the prevalence of the use of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors among addicted people and the attitude towards it" was organized with the participation of 195 addicted people receiving treatment at the Republican Drug Center.
Sh. Huseynli, who gave a broad presentation on the results of the project, said that those results allow to further improve the activities in this direction, especially to determine the priorities in educational activities and to organize the fight against drugs more efficiently.
Later, at the event, Orkhan Jafarov, the director general of the Republic Narcotics Center of the Ministry of Health, Seljan Gafarova, the chief selection specialist of the sports department of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Tanriverdi Aydinov, the deputy head of the permanent Working Group of the State Commission for Combating Drug Addiction and Illegal Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs, Tanriverdi Aydinov of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nadir Mammadov, the representative of the General Anti-Narcotics Department, and Togrul Shahbazov, the head of the Department of Combating Law Violations of the State Customs Committee made a speech.
In the end, journalists" questions on the topic were answered.
